


Joyce's Resolution

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, New Year's Resolutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-29
Updated: 2008-01-29
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15335880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: The second of my three 'resolutions' for the Livejournal communitynekid_spike!





	Joyce's Resolution

**Author's Note:**

> Spike/Joyce! Yay!

_Be more involved in Buffy’s Slaying._

Joyce tapped her pen, looking at the words and scarce believing that she’d written them. How much had changed in her life so that now she could talk about ‘slaying’ like it was an alternative lifestyle or obscure hobby?

Still, what with Buffy starting college, the gap between mother and slayer had never been wider. All attempts to become involved in Buffy’s schoolwork had been met with outright fear. Buffy was having a hard enough time deciding on a major without Mom hanging over her decision like a vulture. No, the slaying was definitely the way to connect with her daughter.

Only this time she wasn’t going to be foolish about it – show up in the graveyard with cocoa. She would… Joyce tapped her pen a few more times.

Restfield Cemetery was dark and quiet as Joyce walked cautiously from her parked car with a warm blanket over one arm and a thermos tucked in the other. “Buffy?” She peered around the monuments, trying not to jump at the occasional eerie shadow. “What am I doing?” She clutched the thermos defensively in front of her. “It’s not like there’s nothing that goes bump in the night around here. Buffy?” She’d meant it to come out as a loud call, but her breath seemed to die in her lungs, leaving only a scared little whisper.

Somewhere, a twig snapped.

She was a good way into the cemetery now and feeling anxious about her odds if she should just run pell-mell back to the car. But Spike’s crypt was only a few feet away. Sighing in relief at the familiar stone façade she ran for it.

Spike appeared from the shadows as she leaned against the heavy metal door to push it open.

“Is that chocolate I smell?” Spike struck a light, and a pose, leering in the flare. “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?”

“Am I…?” Joyce rolled her eyes. “Oh, Spike. No! I was looking for Buffy.”

“Here?” He kicked something on the floor – there was a sound of rolling glass. “Slayer’s not been patrolling Restfield since she moved up to campus.” He stepped more fully into the light, thumbs hooked in his belt. “Like to think its because she trusts yours truly to keep the nasties down.”

Joyce set her thermos down on the ratty old television. “Oh.” She shook her head and set about re-folding the blanket.

“Hey now, what’s wrong?” Spike sat on the arm of the chair. “Something with our girl?”

“No, no, I just…” she waved a hand at the ceiling. “I’ve lost touch. Completely. I don’t even know if there’s an apocalypse coming this month.”

Spike blew smoke through tight lips.

Joyce smoothed the blanket against her stomach. “Now you’re laughing at me.”

He laughed, then, rubbing his cheek his thumb, cigarette dangling from his fingers, almost like he was trying to hide his smile. “No, ‘course not. Let’s see.” He tried to frown seriously. “Demon activity’s been down – which is good unless you’re trying to get a poker game together. No apocalypses on the radar that I’m aware of. Oh!” He flicked his cigarette, eyes lighting with gossip. “Did you meet the Slayer’s new flame? Total git, but all right looking, if you’re in to big and muscled.”

“Buffy’s dating? Is he human?” Joyce winced. “I hate that that is the first question that comes to my mind.”

“Smells human. Clean, too. All farm-bred and boring. I give it three weeks before she’s had her fill of vanilla.”

“You’re talking about my daughter, not a soap opera!” Joyce smacked Spike playfully with the rolled-up blanket.

He tossed his cigarette aside, grabbed the blanket and pulled her closer. “Now you’re all in-touch again, how about that chocolate? Not nice to tease a bloke.”

Their hands were wrapped up together in the blanket after a brief tug-of-war, their forearms braced together, and she looked down at his face just inches from hers. “First I’m seducing you and now I’m teasing? You know it’s the guilty conscience that ascribes ulterior motives.”

He blinked. “You’re beautiful when you say ‘ascribes’.”

“Mm-hmm. And my relative beauty has nothing to do with the proximity of my hot cocoa?”

He wriggled in her grasp, loosening their cocoon of blanket so he could wrap his arms around her waist, drawing her between his knees. “C’mon, luv. Give. Haven’t had chocolate in weeks. Harmony snags any I get.”

Joyce stiffened. “Who’s Harmony?”

It was the vampire’s turn to wince. He shook his head and leaned back, giving her room to cross her arms between them. “Harm’s… Harm’s a mistake, an’ I know it, like a daft puppy you pat on the head one day and follows you home. I been tryin’ to give her the push-off. Hell, I figured if I was a big enough dick she’d go but it’s like trying to get rid of roaches.”

Joyce took another step back, the picnic blanket falling, forgotten and forlorn, into Spike’s lap. “I see Buffy isn’t the only one I’ve lost touch with.”

“Pet? Are you jealous?”

“No. Of course not. I’m sure she’s very…”

“Horrid. She’s very horrid and I’d never let her in again if I had half a backbone.” He stood, looking down, embarrassed. “But you know me, Joyce. Don’t do well on my own.”

The tension left Joyce’s shoulders. “All right, buster. We’re going to have some chocolate and commiserate, but I am not your relationship counselor.”

He smiled at her without raising his head. “Just pathetic enough?”

“You want pathetic? Try finding a man in this town who’s single and not undead.” She uncapped the thermos and poured into the cap.

He settled liquidly into his armchair. “Can’t help you on that count, love, but I know a man or two who fails the criteria and wouldn’t mind a wicked dalliance.”

Joyce affected a prim air as she sat on his knee and handed over the cocoa. “Wicked dalliance? Do you think that’s what a single mother and business owner wants?”

“Hell yes,” he said, lips on the edge of the cup.

Joyce shifted her shoulders. “I’m still deciding if I trust you on this ‘Harmony’ business.”

A sip taken, he laid his head back, eyes closed in exaggerated bliss. “Please, love, let’s not ruin the moment.”

“Addict,” she chided, taking the cup from him for a sip of her own.

He rolled his head against the back of the chair. “Don’t know what I’m doin’, Joyce. ‘S not just the chip. Since losin’ Dru I’ve just been stumbling from moment to moment. I got myself a crypt. Well, what next? Furnish it? I’ve become so bloody domestic.”

“It was like that for me, when Hank left. If I hadn’t had the girls to look after…” she shrugged. “I’d have run off and joined the circus.”

He rubbed her back. “Bet you would have been smoking as a snake-charmer.”

“Is that a double-entendre?”

“Now who’s casting aspersions?”

“Sorry,” she scooted further into his lap, snuggling comfortably against his side as they passed the cocoa back and forth. “You’re a very innocent vampire, of course.”

“Now that,” he took the cup and set it on the floor by the chair, “is an opinion you need divesting of right quick.” He wrapped his arm around her waist

Sliding down against his slim body, Joyce propped herself up on her hands splayed on his chest. “Spike…”

“What? This better not be that bollocks about you bein’ too old somehow for an ancient like me.”

She slapped his chest. “You called me Mrs. Robinson!”

“Anne Bancroft was only five years older than Dustin Hoffman,” Spike said, sliding his hands down from waist to buttocks. “An' only half as sexy as you.”

“Five years? You’re kidding!”

“Hollywood is evil,” he murmured against her collarbone.

Joyce gasped as he tongued the top button open on her blouse and cool lips touched her suddenly very warm skin. “YOU are evil.”

“Damn right.” His breath tickled her skin as he spoke between kisses, working up her neck.

“I’m supposed to be… getting in touch…” she stretched her throat to his attentions.

“I’ll help,” he said, taking her fumbling fingers in hand and guiding them under his shirt, where, without Joyce’s conscious knowledge, they had been trying to go.

She felt smooth, pliant skin with muscle hard underneath and sighed, leaning back to pull the vampire’s shirt off. He obligingly let go of her hips long enough to raise his arms overhead and smiled at her with mock innocence as she threw the t-shirt in a random direction. She sighed. “I always get in trouble when there’s chocolate.”

“That’s nothing. I get in trouble whenever I’m left on my own.”

“Then I guess it’s better for both of us if you’re not.”

“Absolutely,” he said, and then buried his face in her chest.

She pulled him away. "Wait. What about Harmony?"

"You mean that girl who's not even one quarter as sexy as you who I'm never seeing again?"

"Right," she said, and then lost all her stern glare as his nimble fingers worked her blouse free of her slacks. "Just so we're clear, mister."

"Ma'am yes ma'am," he groaned gleefully against her shoulder.

***

Joyce felt like a naughty teen sneaking in her back door in the early light of dawn. Dawn! She held her breath, listening for any sound from the second floor, any indication that Dawn had heard the door and was wondering just what her mother was up to. She sighed and sank into a chair at the table, glancing at the clock. It was only seven. She had time to get cleaned up. Maybe a cup of coffee… the thought of it pricked her like the smell of food to the ravenous.

“Have a date?”

Joyce gasped, jumping up to see Dawn hanging casually off the door-jamb. “What? Like I didn’t notice you weren’t home. Way to go, Mom!” Dawn made a thumbs-up and turned on her heel, hair swinging behind her. “I’m grabbing breakfast with Janice so you’ll have time to sober up!”

“I’m not drunk!” Joyce gaped after her daughter, who was wriggling into her backpack.

“Whatever. We know you’re an adult, mom!”

And just as suddenly, Dawn was out the front door, leaving her in shocked silence.

Joyce looked down at the notepad on the kitchen table, and picking up her pen made a quick strike-through.

_Be more involved ~~in Buffy’s Slaying~~_

There. That was a resolution she could keep.  



End file.
